After serving Union for a combined sixty-two years, Professors Carl George and Twitty Styles of the Biology Department said farewell by creating a fund aimed at “unifying the Union community.”
At a grand retirement party on June I that the pair called “A Celebration of Transition,” the two chose to avoid boring retirement dinners and gold watches in exchange for leaving a memorial in their name.
During an afternoon of music, festivities, and celebration of diversity, George and Styles launched UNITAS-the
Styles-George Endowment Fund which will be devoted to promoting diversity and unifying the Union community. Each donated $5,000 and encouraged guests to contribute to the
fund, which was then matched by the College.
“UNITAS is our legacy to the College,” Styles says. “We hope that as we leave, UNITAS will inspire others to think about and address the problems that exist here.”
The two professors hope that UNITAS will help bring unity to all facets of the campus community. “It's not just the importance of diversity, but also how we can make the diverse elements work together,” George says.
Styles and George say that Union's demographics will soon change and that the College must learn to
adapt to those changes. “We hoped that this
event would catalyze other faculty members and students to really address diversity and community for many years in the future,” Styles explains. “Let us make it the best place that we can for the time we're here-the best place for learning, sharing, growing, and caring.”
[Contributions to UNITAS may be sent to the Office of College Relations at the College.]
After thirty-two years of teaching at Union, Professor Twitty Styles looks forward to being in the classroom after his retirement-but this time as a student.
In his many years of research in parasitology all over the world, Styles has developed a love of art, which he hopes to revive in Union's classrooms.
Taking some art classes is just one of the activities he plans for a busy retirement:
- He hopes to share all that he has learned on his trips throughout the world with senior citizen groups, showing slides and presenting his “scientist's travel log.”
- He plans to play golf.
- He will share an office in Whitaker House with colleague Carl George, compiling the history of the Biology Department at Union.
- But most of all, Styles looks forward to catching up on his non-academic reading. Before retirement, he says, he was always reading about biology to remain current in his field. With
a chuckle, he says, “I look forward to sitting down, getting a good novel, and enjoying it.”
Styles says that his travels associated with academic research and Union terms abroad have been the most intellectually enjoyable times of his career at Union. Visiting the U.S. Embassy, the National Institutes of Health, and local hospitals with students in Bogota, Colombia, was “exhilarating and exciting,” he says, as were trips with students to Mexico and Costa Rica.
Styles founded and chaired the College's AIDS Committee, and watching members of the College community teach others about AIDS has been highly rewarding; he thinks the programs have really saved lives.
“I have learned as much from my students as I have taught them,” he says. “Not only have they been students, but now they are friends. I feel a very close attachment to them.”
Now, through his collaboration with Carl George on the creation of UNITAS, Styles hopes to continue to touch lives and strengthen the cohesion of the Union community.
During retirement, Professor Carl George vows to keep his collection obsession under control.
During more than thirty years at Union, George has come to be known for his collections of specimens, artifacts, and
knowledge – from fish to
birds to early American rafts to the details of the Nott Memorial. Recently, he donated his collection of early American tools and artifacts of the Mohawk Valley to the Schenectady Museum and Schenectady County Historical Society.
“It became such an invasion on our home that we had to do it,” he says, pointing out that there were many thousands of pieces in the collection.
Now, George has become fascinated with early American naturalists, an interest directly related to a course he team teaches-and plans to continue teaching even after
retirement with faculty from the Arts Department. In the course on the illustrated organism, students learn to provide graphic and written analysis of plants and animals.
Taking advantage of his shared office with Twitty Styles, he plans to organize a conference on the role of the senior faculty member in the American academy. In addition, he will continue to monitor the wildlife at Collins Lake in nearby Scotia, a project that he and his students have carried out for more than nine years. Because of this and other projects, he is regularly cited as the local expert on the ecology of the Mohawk Valley.
George cites the 1995 renovation of the Nott Memorial as a high point of his years at Union. “I had been a gadfly on the Nott Memorial for many years, and now, other than teaching students, it would be the Nott Memorial that I am most proud of in terms of my contribution to the College.”
He concedes that, in retirement, he will miss the contact with students most. “Contact with young people is continually vitalizing. Their energy is contagious and it has certainly helped me keep my own viewpoint of life fresh,” he says.